


The Warden Falls

by lemonsharks



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Ficlet, Fort Drakon, Hurt, not actually dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:51:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4512111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asala pierces the Archdemon’s throat while she lies, supine, some yards away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Warden Falls

It is Asala which plunges into the Archdemon’s throat, while she lies, supine, some yards away.

Cousland has Honor in her hand still, its hilt warm from her body, indents from the wrapped coils against her palm fading even now, and she watches, hears Sten’s battle cry above the dragon’s gargled scream. Closes her eyes, opens them again: halfway. The air darkens and stench of death, metal blood and sweat, assaults her.

She coughs, too exhausted to retch, and her eyes drift shut of their own accord, heavy, bloody curtains. She _can’t_ , she _mustn’t,_ she—

 _Like her bones splintering inside her flesh, every joint frozen, freezing, every nerve abuzz, and this, this stretch, this tear,_ this _, this—_ she tries screaming, and the sound doesn’t come, bubbles from her throat and oh, that arrow must have slipped through plate and mail and rib to meet her lung, because there’s blood at the back of her throat, in her nose, and—

And her fingers splay with new wings, new shadow, the call to _retreat_ , retreat, _retreat_ from far, far, miles away, _away_ under clouded sky and dense wood reeking of pine resin and mold, dust and feathers, clean dirt burning away to a crumbling, scorched white beneath feet that aren’t hers. They’ve lost, she’s _lost_ , and—

“ _Kadan._ ”

She could open her eyes if she wanted to, raise a hand to swat his away. Snap as he breaks the arrow off a thumb’s length from where it enters her body, mutters oaths or prayers in a language she doesn’t speak. She could answer. She whimpers instead, and that sound is lost somewhere behind the bridge of her nose. No tears leak from her eyes as Sten hefts her up, into his arms, like she weighs nothing at all, like she’s a brittle-boned sandpiper, caught in the rush of the tide and pulled under, under, _under_. A puff of breath that might be speech leaves her.

“Should’ve been me,” each word softer than the last.

“It was not you,” he replies.

Cousland has heard him speak at greater length, but not like this, not since he commended her dog a true warrior, since she learned her way around the sharp edges of his humor. Scrape like a razor, or be cut like a knife. She nestles her head against the Qunari’s shoulder, and coughs once more when he tightens his arms around her.

The jolt of his steps, she knows, somewhere deep, somewhere fathoms down within her, those are the bodies he’s avoiding. Friends. Soulless beasts, and the echo of wailing shrieks is, she prays, inside her head. Prays the the wet on her face, on his shirt, she prays it’s blood or bile.

And then, _If I die_ now _, I die in the arms of a friend._

On this battlefield, on this day, she has given all she can and it is not enough.


End file.
